


Under My Skin

by Pookaseraph



Series: Another Decade [4]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, POV Outsider, Tattoos, Tumblr: jaegercon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 12:18:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pookaseraph/pseuds/Pookaseraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eddie has his tattoo parlor called on by the two most mismatched individuals he's ever met. It's even stranger when the men want matching tattoos, and he's not even sure what their relationship is to one another; maybe they aren't sure either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under My Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Previously posted on Tumblr, 'tattoos' for tumblr jaegercon

Eddie glanced up at the door as it opened, and two men, maybe in their early thirties, entered his tattoo parlor. Really, in spite of their similar age, the pair of them couldn't have been more different. One just _looked_ older, with a button down shirt under a plaid sweater vest, leaning heavily against a cane; it took all kinds, he knew that, not everyone who wanted a tattoo fit some sort of pattern. The other looked like a hipster, skinny tie, jeans, and _actual_ horn-rimmed glasses.

Stuffy and Old then began to look around the waiting area, seeming to inspect it, the floors, the walls, the ceiling, while Skinny-Tie Hipster actually went to the wall to look at some of the art on display.

"Eddie Vance," he introduced himself to Hipster, hand outstretched.

"Newt," the man answered, shaking his hand before turning back to the wall. "Your work?"

"A lot of it." There were several artists in the parlor. "I've got a portfolio, if you'd like."

'Newt' apparently did like, and followed Eddie a few more feet into the shop where he made himself comfortable with his book, flipping through slowly, looking over the work. Stuffy continued to judge every inch of the shop. 

"Please excuse Hermann," Newt said, not even looking up from the book. "He gets fussy when he's anxious."

"Taking care to not acquire hepatitis is not _fussy_ ," Hermann answered for him. "I made my specifications quite clear when you talked me into this ridiculous _bonding exercise_. I am here, I am standing in a tattoo parlor, what more do you want from me?"

"Have a little enthusiasm here, please."

Eddie recognized an old argument... a _very_ old argument, when he heard one. No matter which box he tried to place the men in - lovers, friends, members of a shared club - he couldn't figure them out. They were well-worn, though, that much was clear.

Hermann glanced over to Newt, and then back to Eddie, when he finally took a deep breath and took a few steps over towards him. "I would like to inspect your autoclave and spore test results."

For all his stiffness, it was an entirely reasonable request; Eddie led him into the back, to the autoclave and where all of their test results were neatly stowed away in a binder, their latest test result on display over the thing. The man carefully thumbed through it, looking at each result. 

"Any failed?"

"Never."

The man nodded, and continued to flip through, regardless.

"You didn't lose a bet, did you?" Eddie asked, partially out of desire to bond, partially to make sure that he did, in fact, want a tattoo. Nothing was worse for business than a customer who couldn't stop talking about their hate of the art on their skin.

Something in the man's demeanor softened, and Eddie actually caught the vague upturn of the corner of Hermann's mouth. "If by 'a bet' you mean: 'does the Earth continue to spin without monsters rampaging across her surface threatening the extinction of the entire human race' then, yes, I lost a bet."

"Optimism!" Newt said from somewhere up front. "Risk taking!"

"Yes, yes, the fact that you licked electrical outlets as a small child should explain your predisposition for insane risk taking."

"Only five... maybe six times."

"Did you expect another outcome after the first?"

Newt snorted in response. "Please, Hermann, you're a scientist. Where would we be if all scientific inquiry ended at the first stumbling block." He seemed to have found a page he liked, though, and brought the book over to where Hermann continued to inspect the historical tests for the parlor. "There."

There were a few moments of silence while Hermann looked at the piece, judging.

"Sleek, clean, a bit geometrical, precise... don't think I don't know what appeals to that funny little brain of yours," Newt continued, even going so far as to tap Hermann on the side of his head - a gesture that Hermann immediately batted away. "Not on the ribs or shoulders..." He made gesture indicating about two inches around. 

"Yes," Hermann answered, giving a little sigh. "Fine. Adequate."

"He means 'good', believe it or not." Newt looked up at him and smiled. "This is the first parlor he's pronounced 'adequate' in the ones we've visited. So, the tattoos won't be matching, per se. Hermann, of course, wants something a bit more conservative, me... mid-back, fairly large. Got a lot of real estate to cover."

He placed the book on the table, and then dug through his pockets, neatly unfolding a few photographs, things that could only be references, and then he opened them up, smoothing them over the nearest available surface. It was... well it looked like a Kaiju, but nothing so large as one, and... the photo had both Newt and Hermann standing next to it... behind it was an even larger...

The two of them were posing with a Kaiju carcass, and they looked like they had been through a trial. Newt's glasses were obviously cracked, he had a wad of paper shoved up his nose, and Hermann looked no better for wear. They had clearly been through hell.

"This is 'Kodachi'," Newt said.

"For the last time--"

"I asked Tendo, and he said it was a good name, so that's its name." Newt then tapped it for emphasis, and for Eddie's attention. " _That_ is what Hermann is getting, clean, though, clean lines, geometrical, _mathy_."

Hermann rolled his eyes, but when Eddie glanced over to him, the man gave a grudging little nod, and the quirk at the corner of his mouth returned. "This imbecile with the faulty adrenal response system, will add insult to injury and be including _this_." Hermann pulled another paper from under the image of 'Kodachi' and instead showing a sweeping Kaiju, one with a long, three-pronged, tail, wings, and some sort of blue _sack_ under its mandible like jaw. "Otachi. He prefers these things... _artistic_."

"You always say it like that," Newt complained, obviously exasperated, again falling into an old argument that Eddie was not idiot enough to get between. "A more sweeping-- well, you'll get the idea. I have a few tattoos I'd like to match it to, more like this." He flipped backwards in the book to a piece that was, as Newt described, far more sweeping and swirled.

"Well..." Eddie glanced over Newt, the man didn't strike him as a tattoo veteran, but looks could be deceiving. "Why don't I get a look, then, and I'll start sketching?"

He bought the pair into the back, the parts of the shop that had more privacy from the street, and with no sense of bashfulness, Newt tugged off his tie, unbuttoned the cuffs of his sleeves, and got to work on the buttons of his shirt. Hermann stood in the corner, arms crossed, as though the entire thing had personally offended him.

Newt, he found, was not just a veteran... and Eddie found himself a bit in awe of the workmanship that covered Newt's body. He had a pair of full sleeves, two Kaiju making up each one, his front was dominated by another, the back had another with wings sprawled across the man's shoulders, but the lower blade and the rest of the back lay blank, a canvas, literally, waiting for ink.

The awesome responsibility of continuing the art across the man's body was actually... "Who did your work?"

It was fairly uniform, it might have been the work of several artists, but each one would have followed the same aesthetic closely enough that it seemed unlikely.

"My guy in San Francisco, Domingo. Died last year." Newt seemed to take a moment, the face of someone who missed the man, they must have been close - after the hours of work on the man's skin they would have had to be. "Kaiju Blue poisoning."

The moment of silence stretched for a few moments, before Hermann came over and set a hand on Newt's shoulder, before the man's manic joy was back in full force.

"You should work on his first," Newt said, thumb hooked towards Hermann. "Don't want him to run away and not come back."

"I think we've already established that I am forevermore stuck with you," Hermann answered, but he did nod. 

After a few abortive attempts to maneuver about and figure out what they would do next, he and Hermann ended up sitting through a few sketches of 'Kodachi' and where Herman would be getting the tattoo. The man was fairly lean, and wanted the tattoo to be private, personal, which left out most of the arms, and he - unsurprisingly nixed the idea of the butt or thigh.

"Newt is quite clear that the spine and ribs can be quite painful."

"It is, or it can be." Eddie shrugged. "Everyone is a little different." Curiosity finally got the better of him, and although he figured he was more likely to get the answer out of Newt, he knew that Hermann would begrudge him the information if he got it from him. "So, how long have you two been...?"

He left it for Hermann to define what they were to each other, as Eddie still had no idea.

"Colleagues," Hermann answered, surprising Eddie at the coolly clinical word. "A decade, give or take." His face softened, though, and he looked to where Newton was bent over another tattoo book. "Something else... not long."

The tantalizing 'something else' did still hang in the air, but Eddie was wise enough to leave it.

Looking at Hermann as he eyed Newt still left the relationship unclear, but he watched Hermann's eyes down the man's back. "Maybe I'll consider the shoulder," he said, eyes over Newt again. "They are hardly a matched pair if I got it somewhere else."

"Your tattoo," Eddie said, good-natured.

"True, but it is a collaboration, of sorts." He turned back to Eddie and gave a little sigh. "With Newton I have no other choice, I suppose."

Eddie almost wanted to question the man's desire to have a tattoo, or even just the strange relationship he apparently shared with Newt. Still, the man finally approved the design, and took even more time to reflect on it, staring at it intently while Eddie got an idea of his canvas and began to sketch for Newt's tattoo. With that finished, he had apparently resigned himself to it, with enough enthusiasm that Eddie felt safe in actually working on him. Throughout the entire tattoo process itself, Newt held the man's hand, and the unending stream of... German, maybe, couldn't have been anything but comforting.

When their positions were eventually reversed, although Newt was in no need of similar comfort, Hermann held his hand through it, as well, and kept up his own stream of German in response...

Eddie had no idea what the hell they were to each other, but it sure was something.

Newt returned two weeks later to get the color done, and Hermann joined him. Eddie didn't even think twice about the interwoven fingers and the soft string of babble that passed between them.

"Still enjoying the tattoo?" He asked, slightly nervous that the man was already regretting it.

"It seems to have gotten under my skin," Hermann answered. "Not unlike other members of the room."

"Hey, I'm adorable," Newt answered.

Eddie glanced at Hermann, who responded by rolling his eyes with all of the purpose of a man who meant to convey 'you see what I have to deal with?' but at the same time, he was definitely smiling, with far too much fondness... enough for Eddie to think that Hermann might agree with Newt.


End file.
